The Vinegrower of Champagne

The regiment arrives

The village is nearly asleep in the perfumed light

A priest is wearing a helmet

The bottle of Champagne is it or not artillery

The vinestocks like ermine on a shield

Hello soldiers

I have seen them come and go running

Hello soldiers bottles of Champagne where the blood ferments

You will stay a few days and then go back up to the line

Echeloned just like the vinestocks

I send my bottles everywhere like the shells of a charming

artillery

The night is blonde o blond wine

A vinegrower sang bowed in his vineyard

A vinegrower mouthless at the far horizon

A vinegrower who was himself the living bottle

A vinegrower who knows what war is

A vinegrower of Champagne who is an artilleryman

It’s evening now and schoolboy games are on

Then the soldiers will move on up there

Where the Artillery uncorks its cremant bottles

Let’s go Goodbye gentlemen try to come back

But no-one knows what may come to pass

Guillaume Apollinaire